Why I'm reluctant to join Facebook…

[magnatom]

I'm a regular browser on facebook. I have some information on there, I have just over 100 friends, but I don't post much or do the daft mafia wars type stuff! Uugh!

I have found it very useful though, and very recently, through facebook a school reunion was organised. I hadn't seen some of these people for over 20 years. Horrible? No not at all. It was a great night. So good nearly everyone is keen to have a second, where we actually have time to chat properly!

It's like everything. Use with care, and use moderately and it can be of good value. Take risks and spend your life on there and it isn't so grand.

 

[Norm]

I'm a regular browser on facebook. I have some information on there, I have just over 100 friends, but I don't post much or do the daft mafia wars type stuff! Uugh!

I have found it very useful though, and very recently, through facebook a school reunion was organised. I hadn't seen some of these people for over 20 years. Horrible? No not at all. It was a great night. So good nearly everyone is keen to have a second, where we actually have time to chat properly!

It's like everything. Use with care, and use moderately and it can be of good value. Take risks and spend your life on there and it isn't so grand.

That just about says it all, IMO.

 

[Crankarm]

I'm a regular browser on facebook. I have some information on there, I have just over 100 friends, but I don't post much or do the daft mafia wars type stuff! Uugh!

I have found it very useful though, and very recently, through facebook a school reunion was organised. I hadn't seen some of these people for over 20 years. Horrible? No not at all. It was a great night. So good nearly everyone is keen to have a second, where we actually have time to chat properly!

It's like everything. Use with care, and use moderately and it can be of good value. Take risks and spend your life on there and it isn't so grand.

Indeed spend all one's spare time on CycleChat instead ..........................

 

[Crackle]

That just about says it all, IMO.

What no surprise that Maggers has a 100 friends

 

[Crankarm]

What no surprise that Maggers has a 100 friends

......... all wanting to give him an early Christmas present .

 

[magnatom]

What no surprise that Maggers has a 100 friends

Strangely enough, none of them are bus drivers......

 

[fossyant]

Indeed spend all one's spare time on CycleChat instead ..........................

What is wrong with that............ ?

 

[Bayerd]

You don't have to accept anyone - it doesn't tell them you are signed up, and they have to 'ask' to be friends. Some folk are hooked, me, I just pop in once in a blue moon and see what folk are up to. Just don't enter any private info, and keep the mandatory fields 'hidden'.

Too many folk post 'off on holiday' etc..... stupid....

If you sign up, just allow those folk you want to see the pics as friends - you'll get messages from time to time about people wanting to be 'friends' - just ignore them if you don't want to release your details - some folk are hell bent on getting as many friends as possible.

There are ex' classmates of my Wife who have asked to be my friend, even though they are on my wife's ignore list - nosey buggers.

We tend to use it to find out what our niece's and nephew's are up to as two aren't at home anymore.

Oh, the irony.......

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

I'm a regular browser on facebook. I have some information on there, I have just over 100 friends, but I don't post much or do the daft mafia wars type stuff! Uugh!

I have found it very useful though, and very recently, through facebook a school reunion was organised. I hadn't seen some of these people for over 20 years. Horrible? No not at all. It was a great night. So good nearly everyone is keen to have a second, where we actually have time to chat properly!

It's like everything. Use with care, and use moderately and it can be of good value. Take risks and spend your life on there and it isn't so grand.

Yes, our school year had a reunion through it also and it was great to see people for the first time in bloody years!! (although a well liked teacher had died from cancer, so it was also a charity event for one of the cancer charities, which was really good).

I do not use it or Bebo very often, but I still find it useful to find out occasionally what people are doing with themselves.

All I can really say about my year is that a large concentration of them have become teachers, and I have also done my 'tour of duty' by working as an assitant at a local special needs school.

I tell you what though, one of our year (who isn't a teacher and I haven't seen on facebook I have to add) gets in the paper every so often as he's a local drug dealer, and has recently been charged with being in possession of Cannabis.
I was friends with him at primary school too, and even then he seemed a bit strange - he once pulled out a huge clump of his hair at his parting just to get attention. The last time I saw him, his fringe STILL didn't quite look right!
His Dad was in the Navy and never home and then died young from a heart attack, so I suppose the attention thing really does make sense now when I think about it.

 

[summerdays]

I believe it is possible for your new friends to send you a link to the photos, without you having to be signed up to FB. I'm on it, have been for quite some time, but still don't know how I feel about it.

It is - I use it to share photos with members of my family who aren't on Facebook. Just ask them to send you the link to it and then you won't need to join.

As for listing those people - Facebook if you let it, looks in your mail address folder and picks out those people who appear in there.

cant understand why people want to give details away that could be read by some complete stranger or even worse by your employer

I've hopefully locked my one down reasonably tightly (got my daughter to do it for me), and I signed up using an email address that I don't often use - that doesn't have my name in it. As a result I don't get found when friends try that find a friend thing. My boss is my friend on Facebook but she has been my friend for 15 years now.

I also decided I needed to know about Facebook as my teenagers were going to have accounts. As it is they have both invited me to be their friends.

 

[PBancroft]

Facebook is an interesting problem. On the one hand it is a very useful communication tool. I know plenty of people (beyond their teens) who are eschewing texts and emails and using it as their primary means of keeping in touch with friends and family. It's a fun way to share info, images, and videos... and play Farmville if you really want to.

Of course, then there's the privacy angle... However, I think that there's a bigger problem which is rarely spoken of, and isn't really unique to Facebook, but the ramifications are prevalent there.

Outside of the home, no one really teaches kids (or anyone for that matter) how to use the Internet.

Failbook is a good example of the mostly harmless variants of this. But we all know of cases where people have written some fairly dumb stuff on their public profiles. For some reason, folk just don't seem to think about the ramifications of their actions. The woman who started the support Raoul Moat group, or the kids who talk about trashing their school on the last day. Sometimes its just talk, but there it is - they've said it, its on the screen and its got their name next to it.

 

[NormanD]

I've never felt the need for FB so never signed up 

 

[Downward]

I love it - Even though I got rid of my account ages ago now when I go into work they tell me what i did on the weekend.

The advantages of having a wife posting on it constant.

I made a note of not posting photo's but my whole life is on there through the wifes account.

It should be made that you can contact FB and request for any photo's your in to be removed.

 

[Downward]

Talking of Photo's it seems someone has written a load of shitty comments against my wedding photo's cause my dad has no idea about privacy setting etc.

 

[ufkacbln]

The more secure way to share is to set up a single use email account, an then a free account with something like flicker, photobucket or box

Then you simply email the details of the account to the other person who can download.